Successful operation for Astana leader
The first rest day of this year’s Tour will be used by the riders to recover from what has been a particularly tough opening week, with crashes, bashes, cuts and bruises added to the usual racing fatigue. The opening week of the race always sees a number of incidents, but this year team leaders and prominent riders have been particularly badly hit, with several being injured and some being forced out of the race.
Johnny Hoogerland is one who plans to continue in the Tour, but will face a very uncomfortable rest day where he will try to keep mobile but also to do everything he can to recover prior to the big mountains. He was thrown into a barbed wire fence yesterday in an incident involving the France Télévision car, some 37 kilometres from the finish.
The crash cost him his chance of the stage win, but he had fortunately collected enough points to retake the lead of the King of the Mountains competition. He was very emotional on the podium, crying as the shock of the situation hit him. Surprisingly, Hoogerland said afterwards that he didn’t blame anyone for the accident, but he may feel differently when he has time to think and to watch the TV images of what took place.
The Dutchman was treated yesterday evening at the hospital in Saint Flour and received 33 sutures to close his wounds.
Meanwhile Alexandre Vinokourov, who was involved in a separate crash earlier in the stage, was successfully operated on last night. He was originally transported to hospital in Aurillac for x-rays, then transferred yesterday evening to the Hospital La Pitié Salpetriere in Paris.
The Astana team has confirmed today that he was operated there by Professor Yves Catonné, who performed surgery to treat what was a complex fracture of the head of right femoral.
He will be joined there tomorrow by his wife, who will travel from Kazakhstan.
Vinokourov spoke about his crash yesterday, saying that he was very disappointed to go out of his final Tour de France in that manner.